I’ve never shied away before on posting about my thoughts on large world issues and things that change our lives here on Land of Marvels. And I won’t stay silent on such a large issue facing our world today either. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in the past few weeks have catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement back into the forefront of our everyday lives and honestly, it’s tragic that it took more senseless killings of black men and women to bring it back to the forefront of many of our lives.The movement should be in our minds every day and I am challenging myself going forward to be a more active participant in the movement day in and day out, not just right now, not just this week. As a white woman, I admit it’s not always at the forefront of my mind to consider the horrific things that are happening daily to Black Americans and People of Color in my own country. I admit my missteps and I will move forward with more support, more thought, more learning, more listening.

No one should be profiled for the color of their skin. No one should be killed because of what they look like. No one should be ok that we live in a world where violence and brutality is just accepted because it was someone who looks different than I might. No one should be ok that someone who looks different than me should have less access to education, to freedoms, to dreams, to be able to their lives without fear.

Because of my skin color, I’ve never had to worry about a police officer killing me. I’ve never had to worry about being profiled because of the color of my skin. I can’t understand what that must feel like and I never will. But I can stand with anyone who has. I can support the movement for freedom and equality for everyone. I can support causes that help move this life-changing movement forward and I can stand with my brothers and sisters, people of all races, all colors, all backgrounds and together we can make a difference. This is a turning point, a tipping point. Let’s change the world forever and move forward together, freedom and equality, the cornerstones of this new world.

And so today, I’m sharing some of the organizations that I have found that I’ve donated money to. Donations are a really powerful way to help organizations that are fighting inequality on the ground right now and supporting People of Color in our communities. Please consider donating to some of the organizations listed below and do your own research to find organizations in your own areas that can do so much more with financial support.

The Black Resilience Fund – Organized by local Black Portlanders, the fund provides immediate support for Black Portlanders, including a warm meal, groceries, and unpaid bills.

Urban League of Portland – The Urban League of Portland’s mission is to empower African-Americans and others to achieve equality in education, employment, health, economic security and quality of life.

NAACP – The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.

There are so many more worthy organizations to support the Black Lives Matter movement and People of Color than just these that I’ve listed above and I will continue to do the research, learn and listen in the coming weeks, months and years as we make a better world together, an equal world alongside our brothers and sisters of every color.

Upon moving into our house, the list of projects to update and renovate was long. Some were things that I knew would take some time, like our Kitchen Renovation, but others were things I knew I could do somewhat quickly and mostly on my own. One of those projects was renovating a fireplace in our living room to update it aesthetically and make it more of a showpiece when you walk in the space. I was able to do this project mostly by myself, with a little help from our handyman on one part of it. I love how it turned out and it matches the aesthetic of the rest of the house now as well as cleaning up the view when you walk in the front door and see it in the living room.

Step 1 : Figure out What You Need to Update

When we moved in, the brick fireplace was painted a really dark brown-y gray color. It honestly looked terrible as a first view of the house when walking in. The hearth was a dark brown tile that was broken in spots. I knew I wanted to tackle this project as one of the first things we did when we moved in and I’m so glad we did. The inside of the fireplace was also filthy and as a true wood burning unit, I don’t think it had been cleaned out in a long while. I decided I was going to do a few things while renovating a fireplace in our living room: paint the brick white, remove the existing tile hearth and re-tile, and clean out the interior of the fireplace and replace it with battery operated candles as the smell of wood burning fires bothers me.

Step 2 : Clean + Paint

The first step was to clean out in the interior of the fireplace filled with soot and trash. It was pretty dirty and the soot was caked in places rally deep as this is the original fireplace in the 1925 house and has been in operation for almost 100 years. Once I had the interior cleaned out, I moved then to the brick exterior of the fireplace in the living room. It had been painted several times I could tell as I started looking and decided to go with a fresh clean bright white just to make it feel clean and modern. After picking my paint color, I went to work, painting the brick with a paint brush and doing several coats to get rid of the old brown gray color. The mantle was already painted black so I left that and focused just on painting the brick itself below the mantle.

Step 3 : Demo Existing Tile Hearth + Level off Surface Underneath

This is the step I needed to get help on. Nick’s brother helped us renovated one of our bathrooms right after we moved in and while he was here, I had him help us with the removal of the existing broken tiles on the hearth. After he removed it, we left it bare for a while thinking about what tile we wanted to put down there. One of the things I was really tied to was to keep the surface flat moving from the original hardwoods to the tile hearth. I didn’t want a lip and I didn’t want a trim piece, even though that would have made the whole process a little easier to hid the imperfections. But I knew early on, that’s the look I wanted and so we figured out a way we could make that happen.

It was really uneven under the tile we removed so we knew we’d have to put in some effort to get it smooth enough to tile again. I had my handyman take a look and he decided what would be best would be to use a machine to grind the concrete down so that was all even before it was ready to lay new tile. He worked on it to get it as smooth and even as he could and got it all ready for me to lay tile. It was well worth paying him to do that part as it required a lot of finesse and made it a lot easier for me to dive next into tiling as it was set up perfectly for me to tile.

Step 4 : Retile the Hearth

I learned to tile a few months before this project when we redid our upstairs bathroom and really enjoyed it. So when we re-did the fireplace hearth, I knew I wanted to save some money and tile it myself. We ended up using leftover tile we had that we had used in the bathroom remodel, a small marble hexagon pattern and it was easy to lay on the newly prepared hearth surface. The tiling and grouting were pretty quick as it’s such a small surface.

The Final Result

The overall result of this minor part of the house made all the difference when you see it upon entering the house. What used to be an eye sore in the living room that’s directly upon when you enter the front door, is not a showpiece that blends materials and colors that we have throughout the house and unifies the living room. It feels modern but also timeless to match the age of the house and was a relatively inexpensive project that we’ve worked on that has really changed the whole feel of the room!

Here we are, 70 some days into our new normal of COVID-19. Honestly there are so many days that I can’t quite believe this is all real. Our world changed so quickly and our new normal is, unfortunately, here to stay I’m afraid. Masks, social distancing and staying at home are the realities we’re facing and while so unreal at times, it’s so important that we figure out a new way to exist, to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. International travel too, I’m afraid, is off the table for a while and our schedules have been obliterated for the next months ahead. But we’re safe and healthy and that’s what matters right now so I’m letting you know what I’m up to with another life update and what’s on the horizon for Nick and I!

Life + Everyday

We’ve been staying home since the beginning of the lockdown orders and both working from home for months now together. It’s actually gone pretty well and it was an easy transition to have us both working from home. I’ve been working from home for 10 years now but it was easy to adjust when Nick was home all the time too and we’ve been enjoying the time together. I’ve been cooking almost everyday (we’ve only done takeout a handful of times) and enjoying my garden and our house during all of this. It’s given me a new perspective on our home and I’ve done quite a few DIY projects during this time too, but more on that below.

I’ve also been working on a few projects for my Design Company and started offering a few new interesting services that you might be interested in checking out:

Travel

After canceling all of our trips from March on, travel was taken off our schedule for the first time ever. We did however get a change of scenery by driving straight from Portland down to Southern California where my parents recently moved. As they had to move in the middle of a pandemic, a lot of things were off the table for them to get help re-locating from Hawaii, which is a headache in itself, moving across the ocean. So we decided to help them out and isolate with them for a couple of weeks to help them get settled. We filled our car with a lot of things that my parents couldn’t get in Hawaii prior to moving and things that they won’t have access to until their shipment arrives in a couple weeks and headed down the I-5 on a weird COVID-19 road trip. We stopped for the night and stayed at Nick’s parents’ empty house in Medford (5 hours from us) while they aren’t there and then continued on driving straight to Southern California in a day. We’re here currently and will be here for a while to help them get settled as well as isolating with them at their house here.

While this is in no way a vacation or really travel as I would count it, it’s definitely been nice to get a change of scenery even if it means we’re still not really leaving the house much or doing much of anything except unpacking and helping my parents get settled. But it is nice to spend the time with them and stay safe all together. I’m not sure when our next actual trip will be but we’re taking it day by day and staying healthy, that’s the most important thing right now.

House Renovation

Before we drove down to Pasadena, we’ve been doing a few projects here and there around our house. I painted the kitchen and bathroom flooring downstairs, finished projects in our garden and worked on some general maintenance things I’ve been meaning to do for a while. We don’t have much more in renovation plans scheduled coming up anytime soon other than some exterior painting of window frames that I’ll do this Summer and random garden upkeep.

As we move more into these uncertain times, stay safe and healthy everybody!

I sat down a few days ago to really think through everything happening in the world right now, to assess my feelings and my emotions and just to think. The rain was pouring outside as I watched through the windows in my dining room to the street, empty of people but so vibrantly green. If you’ve never experienced Oregon in the Spring or Summer, it’s very very green to say the least. My cousin, who’s from Texas, once remarked upon her yearly trips to visit family here in the Pacific Northwest that even though she visited every Summer, Oregon and Washington are so vibrantly green this time of the year that to outsiders, it’s often a little overwhelming when you’re not used to that. And so, just like now, the world outside my windows is overwhelmingly green. New life is all around, new flowers popping up every day. And yet, at the same time, while one facet of the world is filled with new life all around us, in other facets, so many of us are feeling completely empty, lost, scared.

It’s a rare thing to say that you’ve lived through a pandemic. In the world’s history, only a handful of generations can say that. And for many of us, looking back years from now, we’ll tell stories of this time, that time the world stood still. We’ll remember all sorts of things about this time but we’ll all remember it differently. As united as we are in this pandemic, in something that is affecting the entire planet, we’re all experiencing it completely uniquely within the frame of our lives.

I vividly remember an evening in mid-March after reading a story about Italy in those first few terrifying weeks as the virus made its way through Europe. The story was talking about how doctors were making war-time decisions, on who dies and who gets treated because they couldn’t treat everyone. That thought stood out to me, like wow, this is really happening. I remember thinking to myself then that I knew everything was going to change. It was the moment that all of this felt real, that it took over everything else in our lives.

I’ll also remember the death toll rising, those numbers seemed so surreal as thousands started dying everyday, most of them so tragically alone. I’ll remember the morning I got the email that I was furloughed. Thankfully, I’m back working now but daily, I have such deep emotions for the millions of people that are still out of work, can’t afford to feed their families and are in dire straights. I’ll remember as the masses donned masks, a reality that feels like it began overnight. I’ll remember washing my hands over and over when I return from the grocery store, feeling like being over-cautious still doesn’t seem like enough to wipe the thought out of your mind that the person that got a little too close to you might have infected you. I’ll remember as stores started installing plexiglass screens and one way markers on the grocery store aisles. I’ll remember the chaotic searches for toilet paper and Clorox cleaning supplies and flour and yeast. I’ll never forget the Zoom dinner dates with friends and needing to stop watching the news in an effort to regain some sense of a normal frame of mind. I’ll remember the uncertainty, the canceled trips, the unknowns about our future. I’ll remember realizing that our world is going to change, for better or for worse. I’ll remember the way my State handled this and how proud I’ve been to call myself an Oregonian. I’ll never forget wiping down every package that gets delivered and cooking for 70 plus days in a row. I’ll remember the way that we suddenly realized how important certain people in our society are, the grocery store clerks and stockers, the nurses and doctors, the people cleaning our public spaces, the delivery people bringing us all our packages. I’ll remember the anxiety attacks, the stress, the heartache of loss.

As we look back on this strange time in the world, I think we’ll always have anxiety that we know was produced by COVID. I think our outlook will change, mine will at least and already has. I think the way our society runs will change, I hope so at least. I think the world will be irreparably different after this. I think travel will be different. I think eating out at restaurants and how we shop for food will be different. This virus isn’t going away and even after a vaccine is developed, if it works, it’s going to take years to make sure the world is inoculated and protected. This isn’t going to be fixed quickly and as much as I would like to jump back in to a full life like so many of you want to as well, I’ve personally come to the conclusion that we must adapt. We must change, as hard as it may be. I know I won’t be traveling for a while, something that fulfills me, something that was a major part of my life and I’m wrangling with that development. Life and work won’t be the same as they were before this, but maybe that’s not the worst thing. Change is a constant in our lives even as much as we fight it. And personally, I’m trying to use this time, this pause in the world, to re-evaluate what I want out of life. I’m using this time to realize my own flaws and what’s really important going forward.

I hope that we look back on this pandemic in five or ten years and know that we became better people out of it. I hope that we become a better country out of this and a better world. I hope we shine the spotlight on the things that aren’t working in our societies and fix them. I hope we realize that the loudest voices aren’t always the most important. I hope we remember the people that got us through this, that we remember what it felt like to feel the pain of loss, to feel the anxiety of unknowns. I hope that we learn who we are through this, that we move forward when we are able with a clearer vision of the world we want to create. I hope we see what works and what doesn’t, and I hope that as a society, as a world, we remember the things we felt when the world stood still.

In my ongoing series about projects we’ve done at our 1925 Dutch Colonial house in Portland, today I’m discussing a project that was one of the biggest we’ve undertaken so far in our house flipping and renovation projects. When we moved in, I knew the kitchen needed an overhaul. First off, it was updated but had a 90’s style vibe and honestly, didn’t fit with the historic nature of the house at all. It felt totally removed from the style of the rest of the house and especially as we started renovating other rooms, it felt even more removed as time went on. We honestly didn’t do much to the kitchen right away when we moved in, other than paint the walls white, as they had been a tan brown that made the whole space feel really dark. I made the decision to not even invest in changing out hardware or anything until we made the decision on the direction we wanted to go eventually with the kitchen renovation. Renovating a kitchen is time consuming, very expensive and not an easy project to tackle and we decided to hold off on it for about a year from when we moved in, to allow us to figure out what we really wanted to do exactly and have some time to save up for the renovation.

This house is not our forever home and we’ll sell it eventually, so we looked at the kitchen remodel from two different perspectives. The first was obviously to make it how we wanted it to be while we live here, to make it more aesthetically pleasing and more efficient for us in the short term. But the second perspective, and one we always look at in our homes, is for resale purposes. We have, over the years, flipped 2 properties and this will be our third when we eventually sell in the next handful of years. We buy, move in and renovate and then sell as part of our investment planning but also because it’s something we enjoy. So this house too will follow that plan eventually. Looking at the kitchen, we had to decide what we wanted to spend on it to renovate knowing that we won’t be here forever.

At first, I thought maybe we’d just gut it all and start over. But the more we thought of it and looked at prices for doing that, we realized that economically it didn’t make sense to spend over $10,000 to totally re-do it when we could make smaller changes for under $5,000 to get it to a point where we were happy with it and that would also help with resale down the road. So we took the second route and tried to keep costs down where we could. In the end, the kitchen is a million times better than it was, both for us and resale.

Step 1 : Make a Renovation Plan – What to Keep and What to Get Rid Of

To start, it’s vitally important when renovating a kitchen to make a plan. Answer questions like what are we getting rid of and what’s getting replaced? Are you changing out all the hardware? Are you getting rid of cabinets or keeping existing? Are you painting? Are you changing the layout? There are endless things you’ll want to discuss and make sure you know exactly what you want to do. Granted, some of those things might change as you go but at least have a clear picture of what you want to do before you get started.

In the beginning of our renovation, I wanted to remove the wall cabinets and replace them with open wall shelves. And while I loved that idea, it didn’t end up becoming a reality due to a few different reasons once we started the renovations but even with that plan in mind, I was able to change it just a bit and still get some open shelving. So be flexible as you get going, but keep your plan in mind.

Step 2 : Price Everything Out and Hire Help

After I had a plan in place, I started pricing everything out. We decided to do the following renovations:

-Keep the Cabinets but replace the hardware

-Remove bread box cabinet in the corner to gain more counter space and add tile to empty wall space once removed

-Replace towel racks and miscellaneous items as well as install new magnetic knife rack

-Replace the flooring (we ended up doing a DIY on this)

-Add floating wall shelves in an empty nook area

Once I had my list of projects that we were going to tackle, I started pricing everything out. Some of it we could do ourselves but other things would need to be done by a contractor or electrician. In the end, we ended up spending right around $5,000. We did end up waiting on some of the items like replacing the refrigerator until months later so some money has been spent at other times throughout the time we’ve lived here, but ultimately, we made a pretty big change aesthetically for at least half of what it would have cost had we gutted the kitchen and started from scratch.

I ended up hiring a contractor that I’ve worked with a lot as well as electricians as part of our renovation and I’m so glad I did. They ended up being huge helps on the things we couldn’t do ourselves and even though their cost might seem high, it’s well worth it to have those items done correctly.

Step 3 : Figure Out What You Can Do Yourself to Save Money

There were several parts of the kitchen renovation that we did ourselves that saved us a decent amount of money in the end. I’m a believer in DIY when it makes sense and when you have the time and ability to do it. If you don’t, hire someone to help.

These are the things we did ourselves in the kitchen renovation that saved us money:

-Replaced all the hardware on the cabinets ourselves – this only requires a screw driver or a drill

-Painted all the walls – I’m a big believer in painting in my homes as it’s an easy project that costs a lot of money to hire someone else to do

-Tiled the walls behind where the bread box used to be – I learned to tile on my own and it’s surprisingly therapeutic! It’s easy to learn and well worth doing yourself to save money. I simply matched the subway tile that was already there and found a grout in a similar shade and went to work.

Step 4 : Keep a Schedule for When Work is Happening and Stay on Top of It

Renovating a kitchen can take a long time depending on how much work you’re doing. It’s really important to stay on top of the renovation schedule and make sure work is happening when and where it should be. Contractors and other people like electricians need management in a large project to make sure they’re doing exactly what you want. Communicate and make sure everything is running the way it should be.

You’ll also need to be making decisions on the fly so be available for questions and be able to adjust as you go. For example, we discovered an issue with the ceiling when we took the wall cabinets off to replace them with floating shelves and it was going to be such a huge hassle that we ended up just putting the wall cabinets back. We also had to make a change on our Quartz countertop which I had originally thought of doing in a marble pattern but ultimately ended up going with a crystal look instead due to cost and availability. Things will always come up during the process so it’s important to manage the project throughout and keep track of when everything is happening.

The Final Result

Ultimately, I’m so happy with how our kitchen renovation turned out! It’s not my dream kitchen but it’s also much more of a showpiece in the house now than it was. It matches the rest of the home, it’s functional (way more so than when we moved in) and it’s actually a space I enjoy being in now! Plus it will be so much better for resale and it feels timeless to go with the house aesthetically but also modern and updated – the best of both worlds.

Before and Afters

Tips for Renovating a Kitchen

Be clear about what you want – in both style and layout.

Be flexible as things come up and make decisions as you go quickly so as not to waste time and money.

Do as much as you can yourself to save money but also know that certain things will need to be done by professionals.

Some travel stories are comical, some are sad but hopeful. This one honestly at the time when it was happening was a story in juxtapositions. Looking back, it’s comical to Nick and I but it just shows that “out of sight, out of mind” is sometimes a coping mechanism that allows you to overlook almost anything. To start this travel story, a few years back, I saw a travel deal for flights from LAX to Stockholm in January for just $200 per person, roundtrip. I called Nick at work and talked him into doing a long weekend in Stockholm. Even though we knew it would be cold and that it would be a super quick trip, like only 2 days on the ground quick, we decided to do it. For that price, I couldn’t pass it up!

Fast forward to the day we left and our flight out of LAX on a Friday evening started off badly. It was departing from a really far away terminal and we walked for what seemed like miles to get to the gate, only to find out it was delayed, over and over again. We sat in that old terminal on the outskirts of the Thomas Bradley International Terminal, with no food in that area and old cheap seating for what seemed like endless hours. Nick started not feeling great before we even got on the plane but once we got airborne, it got worse. I’m not sure exactly what he had, whether food poisoning or a flu but he was basically on the floor of the airplane bathroom the whole flight really sick. It was a miserable flight for him obviously and I spent the whole flight worrying about him. We got little to no sleep on the red-eye and arrived into Stockholm exhausted, but by the time we landed, he was luckily feeling a little better.

Our 2 days in Stockholm were honestly some of the best travel days we’ve had and I don’t say that lightly. Honestly, a lot of people gave me such a hard time that we’d fly to Europe for just 2 days but sometimes in those really short travel experiences, you find that you’re living even more in the moment because you know you have a deadline. I fell hard for Stockholm and it’s a city I’d love to go back to to spend more time in long term. We didn’t have much a plan and we just wandered the empty streets in the middle of Winter, walking hand in hand down cobblestone alleys and stopping for Fika breaks with cinnamon buns and espressos to warm up. We ate Swedish meatballs and took in the gem colored buildings of Gamla Stan and enjoyed every minute of it.

The long night on the airplane headed there seemed to evaporate like it had never happened. And that’s the magic of travel, sometimes when you can let everything go and just take the time to really immerse yourself in a place, even for just a couple of days, your experience will be that much deeper. I find it’s those trips that are quick that I actually sometimes gain more from travel, that I really let myself let go and take in every single thing I can in a different way than you do with a longer trip. Every moment matters. Every experience more intricate. Our 2 days in Stockholm were lovely until the morning we were due to leave and I started not feeling very well. Laying in our hotel room bed knowing we had to leave for the airport soon and fly home I looked at my phone to see an email from Norwegian Air that there were upgrades available for our return flight home. I knew we had to do it, not only because I didn’t think I could make it feeling the way I did in a crammed coach seat for the whole journey home but also knowing that Nick was so sick on the way over and we were desperately in need of some sleep.

The price at the time was pretty high for an upgrade and we don’t usually pay for upgrades like that because I’d rather sit in Coach and save the cash for another trip, but honestly at that moment, I didn’t care what the price was and I probably would have paid a lot more knowing how badly I was starting to feel. It would also have been a lot more money to have to reschedule our flights if we chose that route and we pressed the button to pay and just went for it, cost be damned. Thank God we did because I was in and out of the bathroom the whole way home and felt like Hell. I kept thinking at least Nick was able to spread out and sleep in our upgraded seats and at least when I started feeling a little better halfway through the flight, I could try to sleep more comfortably too. Sometimes you just have to just do what you can to make the situation better, whatever that means in the moment. On this trip, paying for the upgrade was the best thing we could have possibly done, even though I still look back and can’t believe we paid what we did. C’est la vie.

The moral of this travel story is this: travel isn’t always perfect. We get sick, we have bad experiences and we waste money on things we probably don’t really “need” but in the end, I look back on that trip to Stockholm with more fond memories than I do of the negative ones. I remember one of the best meals of my life, I remember mornings in cafes eating cinnamon buns and I remember wandering tiny cobblestone streets hand in hand with my love. Sure, it was miserable getting there and back, and we laugh about that now, but sometimes, travel and the act of immersing yourself, will always overcome the bad. Travel has a way of erasing the bad and leaving only an imprint on your heart of the place, of the good, of the transformative moments you had there. Travel isn’t always amazing but it is incredible and I can’t wait to get back to making more memories like our 2 day escape in Stockholm.

Looking forward to the next year ahead during this season of COVID-19, I’m more and more coming to the conclusion that we might not be doing much, if any, international travel for a long while. And to ready myself for that circumstance, I’m starting to daydream about the opportunity to explore more of the USA and Canada (let’s cross our fingers that we’ll at least be able to do that!). When I think about my own country, I’ve already seen a lot of it but I’d specifically like to explore more via road trips and visit some more off the beaten path locations by car that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to yet. Today I’m sharing 5 North American road trips I’m dreaming of taking and hopefully we’ll be able to make some of these a reality in the next year as our travel to other parts of the world is greatly diminished. So if you’re like me and looking ahead dreaming of travel, here’s the places I’d love to take advantage of and explore while we’re grounded!

Ashville, North Carolina and Tennessee

This area of the US has long been on my list to explore and by car, it would be amazing. If we had the time (which I’m not sure we will this year) I’d actually love to drive from Oregon to Asheville through the Mid-West and then loop back home through the American South and Texas, back up through California. I’m craving all my favorite things about the American South like the incredible food and beautiful landscapes and architecture. Not sure if this road trip could be a possibility for us but it would be epic!

California and Oregon Coastline

This particular roadtrip might be a possibility this year or next since it’s easier to do and closer to home on the West Coast. Plus my parents are moving to Southern California at the end of this month so we’ll be visiting them a lot and this roadtrip up the California Coast through Big Sur and Carmel, up through the Southern Oregon Coast back to Portland is an amazing scenic drive that I’d love to try and do at some point this next year.

Newfoundland and Novia Scotia

I’ve long wanted to get to the Eastern Coast of Canada and while this would be one hell of a long roadtrip for us from the West Coast, someday I’d love to do it. This part of Canada is so rugged and raw, a part of the country that I’d love to be able to explore via car and stop as we want to take in the beautiful landscape of the area, especially during the Summer or early Fall.

Banff

We’ve actually thought of road tripping up to Banff from Portland a few different times and I think this might just be the year to do it if we get the chance. At just over a 12 hour straight drive from our home in Portland, this might be a great roadtrip to see a lot of amazing landscapes and a scenic adventure in the great outdoors of a beautiful area of Canada. Granted, we’ll have to wait until the Canadian border opens again and see what the requirements are, but it might be worth looking into!

National Parks in Utah

We had a roadtrip scheduled for March this year to drive down into Utah and see the amazing national parks in the state like Zion and Arches and Monument Valley. Obviously, that trip didn’t happen due to the lockdowns for COVID-19, but I’d love to try to make that a reality later this year if we get the chance. We’re currently scheduled to go to Europe for our anniversary and my birthday in October and the hope of that happening is dwindling by the day unfortunately. If we have to ultimately cancel that Europe trip, I’d love to try and do this roadtrip instead. Here’s hoping!

This travel story starts in the Spring of 2019, in February to more exact. Last year in February my grandmother, who lives an hour away from me was diagnosed with breast cancer. To be here at home to help out with her surgery and recovery, Nick and I decided to cancel our planned trip to Europe at the end of March 2019. Originally we were due to travel to London, Paris and Tuscany but when we canceled our plans and rebooked it for later in the Summer over the first week of July, we decided to take advantage of the postponed travel happening during the Summer, a time when we usually don’t travel, and see the lavender in bloom again in the South of France. In the end, our new itinerary took us to Paris and Provence and we were really excited. After falling in love with Provence and seeing the famous lavender bloom in this region of France a couple years back, we were really excited about a return visit. The trip was rebooked and we waited until July rolled around and with our suitcases packed, we headed for our favorite place in the world: France.

To be fair, the trip didn’t start out all that great. We flew from Portland to New York, had a six hour layover that we spent wandering around Brooklyn after stashing our bags at a friend’s apartment that was out of town. We spent most of that six hours soaking wet from sweat as the heat and humidity was sweltering. After finally making into the airport that evening for our red eye flight to London (where we were due to connect to a train to Paris… more on that coming), we changed our sweaty clothes and headed to our gate. Soon enough, we found our flight was delayed and then delayed again. Side note here… this is why I hate flying through places and will almost always do a nonstop if at all possible.

In the end, the good news was that we actually ended up getting upgraded to Business Class which was an amazing surprise but the bad news was that since we were so delayed leaving New York that night, we ended up missing our connecting train to Paris. Again, I’ll stop here and say that I would never do this itinerary again but it was the only thing possible when I rebooked our Spring trip, moving it to July and booking only a few months out, not a lot was available for decent prices. Long story short on the transportation issue, we missed our Eurostar train to Paris and had to repurchase tickets for another train that literally only had 2 seats left… luckily we got them.

Arriving in Paris, we spent two idyllic days in our favorite city. We strolled around, ate croissants and baguettes at every stop. We lounged in parks and watched sunsets over the Eiffel Tower. Truly the beginning of our trip, our time in Paris, was so lovely.

As our time in Paris came to a close, we took a train to Lyon, a city we’d never been to before and one that I also didn’t know much about. Honestly, I hadn’t even seen anybody really ever traveling to Lyon and when I was planning this trip, I didn’t book us any time in the city at all as it didn’t seem like a great “destination.” We took a tram from the train station in Lyon to the Lyon Airport, which in hindsight was also stupid in that we could have taken the train directly to the airport. But anyways, I digress. We rented our car and headed for Provence, excited for one of our favorite destinations.

The drive there was fine, other than a terrible lunch at a rest area restaurant and we arrived in L’Isle sur la Sorgue by late afternoon, a tiny little beautiful town in Southern France. We had booked an AirBnB for this part of the trip, partly because it was way cheaper than the hotels in the area during peak season and partly because we wanted to be in a town and most of the hotels in Provence are in the countryside. When I booked the apartment, I had specifically filtered in that it had to have air conditioning as I know how hot it can get in Provence in July and as someone who suffers from severe heat strokes when it’s excessively warm, I knew I would need it. This apartment showed it as having air conditioning and it was cute and right in the center of town and on paper, it looked perfect.

We arrived to the apartment and met the host, who spoke no English and I limbered along in broken French, understanding way more of what she said than I could actually reply back in French. Upon entering the space, it was hot, like really hot. Some background on the time frame, that two weeks prior to us arriving had shown Europe a heatwave like they hadn’t had in years. Provence had been well over 100 degrees for weeks at that point and after briefly looking around the apartment, the only air conditioning that actually existed was a floor unit that was just venting all the hot air it was pulling in, back right into the apartment. I knew it wouldn’t be good but we politely listened to our host and decided to figure it out later. After showing us around, she left and we changed to head into town and grab some dinner, hoping it would cool down in the apartment as the evening came. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

By this point, I wasn’t feeling well already. After the not so great lunch coupled with being jet lagged and it being a solid 100+ degrees outside and probably 90+ inside our apartment for the next three days, my body was starting to shut down. Now, I should preface this by saying, I have never done well with heat. I get really physically sick when my body gets overheated and I’ve never been good with excessive heat. We walked slowly through the town to get some dinner, but honestly at that point, I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. As we got about 5 minutes walk into town, a massive thunderstorm began and was dumping buckets of rain on us as we walked… no umbrella or rain coats. We were soaking wet and stood under an awning for a bit waiting to see if it would clear. We eventually ventured through the rain to find a pizza place and got a takeaway pizza for Nick and headed back to the apartment, still soaking wet from the rain.

The rest of the night was honestly a bit of a blur and one of the most vivid memories of my life all at once. Without getting too graphic, I got so violently sick that I was in and out of the one tiny bathroom for hours on end. On top of that, the bathroom had no ventilation so while the rest of the apartment was probably 90 degrees, the bathroom was like a sauna trapping in all the heat when the door was closed. Every time I was in the bathroom, I felt like I might pass out from the heat and I was literally soaking wet with sweat and feeling so sick that I was just miserable.

Hours later after finally feeling a tiny bit better, I made it up to the loft where the bed was to try to go to sleep. Whether it was from feeling so ill, jet lagged or just so hot I could barely stand it, I maybe slept an hour that night.

In the morning, when Nick woke up, I told him about my terrible night. He admitted too that it was just way too hot to stay where we were for another night. We would have no respite from the heat at all where we were and he knew I couldn’t physically handle another night being so ill. I did a little bit of research and found a hotel back in Lyon, thinking that would be the easiest place to return to since we’d have to return our rental car there in a couple days anyways. For only $100 for the night, it seemed like the best money I could spend at that point. After a quick discussion, we booked it and mapped out how we’d want to spend our last few hours in Provence, since we’d originally planned on being there a few days.

After spending the morning exploring the town we were in, we checked out of the apartment early (forfeiting the cost of another night we had already paid, but at that point, we knew it was well worth it). We took a long way back to Lyon, driving the backroads to Gordes and the Semanque Abbey, two spots we didn’t get to see on our first trip to Provence a few years before. After fields of lavender and windy country roads, we finally made our way back to the highway to head back to Lyon for the remainder of our trip.

Now keep in mind before this next part, in hindsight, we die laughing about this story time and time again, but in the moment, I can’t quite believe it happened. At this point I was running on an hour of sleep, I was jet lagged and feeling terrible from the heat. I had also been binging on dairy on this trip, which was a sort of test if my normal dairy-free diet mattered with European dairy products. Guess what? It didn’t matter and I got just as sick from dairy there as I do at home in the US. The reason I mention this is that when I eat a lot of dairy, it makes me have aura migraines, tingling in my arms and legs and makes me really foggy headed. So add that all in with heat stroke, jet lag and going on an hour of sleep and me behind the wheel of a car in a foreign country. Side note here, I usually drive when we travel abroad as we’ve found over the years that’s usually just easier for us and to have Nick navigating and giving me directions… so that’s why I was driving even under those conditions. In hindsight, I really shouldn’t have been driving, especially when you read the next part of this story.

In France, when you get on the highways, you are supposed to take a ticket from a toll station. Then when you get to the point of the highway when it forks off to different areas of the country, you put that ticket in a toll station and pay your toll. This should be straight forward right? Well it turns out, it wasn’t.

We drove up to the toll station after our scenic drive that morning to get on the highway. With confusing signs in French, we weren’t sure which line to choose so decided to follow the car in front of us. When the car in front of us pulled up to the ticket machine, it didn’t look like they grabbed a ticket, instead it looked like they pulled up, the median rose up and they pulled right through. As I was right behind them, in my hazy state of mine, I followed them, not stopping to pull a ticket and drove right under the median guard that had just opened for them. As I got half way under the median, it lowered and hit our rental car right in the center of the roof of the car and made such a loud sound that we thought for sure it had damaged the car. The worst part… I just kept driving!

Afterwards, we pulled over on the side of the road to take a look if it had damaged the rental car. Luckily there was no damage, but Nick kept looking at me and saying “you just drove through a median!” At the time, we were both in such shock, we didn’t know how to proceed except for laughing. I seriously couldn’t believe I had done that but at the same time, we didn’t know what else to do except to keep driving on.

It wasn’t until we arrived at the lines for the toll station where we were supposed to pay our toll a couple hours later that we both realized we didn’t have a ticket to pay our toll as we had bypassed that whole situation when I ran through a median, in a foreign country running on an hour of sleep. Nervous about what would happen, we inched forward in the long lines of cars until we got to the ticket machine that I was supposed to insert a ticket. Not knowing what to do, I hit the information button. Luckily it called a real person on the other end but not so luckily for me, I ended up trying to explain why I didn’t have a ticket and consequently got yelled at in French for two minutes before they apparently decided I wasn’t worth fighting with and gave me a price to pay. I’ll never get the French man’s voice out of my head, yelling at me over the intercom for all to hear “You have no ticket?! Why no ticket!?!” over and over again.

The rest of the drive was thankfully fairly smooth and we ended in Lyon, in a hotel that was cool with air conditioning and in a city that we ended up exploring and absolutely loving. I won’t lie, that particular trip was kind of a nightmare when you look at all the bits and pieces of it, but it’s one that I end up looking back on so fondly because we ended up falling in love with Lyon and having an amazing last couple of days in France. I honestly felt like hell most of the trip, but that’s the thing about travel, sometimes what you feel in the moment looks a whole lot different in hindsight. And honestly, having a story to tell when I ran through a median in a rental car is pretty hilarious in the scheme of things, right?

Granted, your travel plans are probably on pause for the present moment due to the ongoing global health situation. But provided you and yours are keeping well, one way to stave off the boredom is by planning your perfect family vacay for 2021 – debating this over the next few weeks might be a welcome distraction from the doom and gloom of the news cycle and provide some hope for brighter days ahead.

As kids get older and their tastes diversify, finding a global hotspot that satisfies every member pf the family can be tough, but if you appreciate sun, sea, sand, culture, cuisine and history, Portugal might be the ideal choice.

Not convinced? You will be after an eyeful of Portugal’s top scenic spots.

Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, Lisbon

If you like ornate religious buildings, you’ll love Mosteiro dos Jeronimos in the Lisbon suburb of Belem – it was built by King Manuel I to honour Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498.

It’s beautiful inside and out, with a magnificent white minaret contrasting with surrounding terracotta rooftops and an elaborate cloister that houses the body of da Gama and other luminaries like Luis de Camoes, the nation’s finest poet.

Sortelha

The ancient hilltop village of Sortelha is located in Concelho do Sebugal in Beira Alta province and, with charming cobbled streets, authentic stone-built dwellings, a well-preserved castle and verdant surrounding scenery, it’s a fairy tale come true.

The solid castle was built by King Sancho II in the 13th Century and looms imposingly over the village – climb the tower and you’re rewarded by breath taking views of the environs. There are also several artisan shops to buy gifts like wool rugs and wooden sculptures.

Sintra

Nestled in the Sintra Mountains in western Portugal, the Sintra region is only 30 minutes from the middle of Lisbon, but it boasts arguably the most stunning collection of castles in the world.

Dubbed a World Heritage site by UNESCO, you can take your pick from the Palace of Sintra, Castle of the Moors, Pena Palace and Monserrate Palace. They’re all lovely, but the brightly coloured Palace of Sintra can’t fail to put a smile on anyone’s face.

When we moved into our 1925 Dutch Colonial house in SE Portland a year and a half ago, it was the first time we’ve had an actual yard, as we’ve been in townhomes and condos previously. Immediately upon moving in, I knew what my long term vision was for the yard here. The space isn’t all that big but we knew that had a lot of work ahead to get it to where I knew I wanted it eventually to be.

The landscape in place when we moved in was a mess. Everything had been left unattended for months on end, it was a random assortment of plants without a reason for where stuff was and it definitely needed a makeover. The look of the yard definitely dated the house and didn’t do it any favors. My inspiration for what I knew I eventually wanted in the yard was the house itself, a Dutch Colonial style home. I wanted to use that house style to create something that you might see in New England, filled with hydrangeas and bushels of flowers hanging over the edges of a retaining wall. Fast forward almost 2 years later and our landscape has been completely remodeled from what it was when we moved in and here’s all about how we got there by renovating a garden.

The idea I went into the garden remodel with as a New England style garden ended up getting merged with a French Provencal vibe and honestly, it ended up being the perfect merge of two styles I love. Our house backs up against a commercial building in the backyard, so we also had to be mindful of that and balance the very industrial style of the metal building behind us with a wild but maintained garden style that juxtaposes against that backdrop. And while it might have taken longer to get to the point we’re at now than I had originally imagined, I love the direction our garden is going and how it’s growing into styles I love.

Step 1 : Demo Almost Everything

One of the first things I had done when we moved into the house in August of 2018 was to have a landscape company come out and pull out almost everything in the yard, front and back. The front and side yards of our house are small sections of planting in a raised wood retaining wall. In the front, I had everything ripped out. In the side, I left a large hydrangea bush and 4 mature rose bushes… everything else was pulled out and trucked away.

In the back, I had everything taken out except for a mature blueberry bush that we kept. We have a small patio out back and a small planting area which was a complete jungle. You couldn’t even get back to the end of the property because it was so overgrown. For that entire Fall and Winter, we left the yard basically empty and didn’t start tackling projects outside until the following Spring.

Step 2 : Take down the Picket Fence and Lay Out a Plan

Once February rolled around, we spent the month tackling the demolition of the existing wooden picket fence around the whole exterior of the house. While it looked cute from afar, the wood was almost completely rotted and it looked terrible up close, as well as making it really hard to get in and do any maintenance inside the area. It took a few weekends of work but we eventually got it all out and disposed of.

Next we laid out a plan for the space now that we could see it empty without the fencing. My primary goal was to have an organized layout but with a little bit of a “wild” feel with the plantings. We laid out a plan for what plant types might go where and I did a whole bunch of research for what types of plants would work for our location but also give me the aesthetic that I wanted.

I also came up with a plan for color that I wanted in the whole garden, front and back. I ended up going with deep pinks and purples as my color scheme, so I went with plants that come in those color ways like Lavender, Alliums, Hyacinth and Hydrangeas.

Step 3 : Buy the Plants and Get Planting

Once the weather warmed up a little bit in March, we headed to our local Portland Nursery for the plants we had decided upon. In the front, we did a row of 4 hydrangeas and a border around the front and side of the bed with boxwoods. Eventually, the hydrangeas will start to grow together and form an organized but a little bit wild layout in the front yard against the house. The boxwoods bring a nice barrier without adding fencing and eventually when they get bigger, we’ll keep them a little rough in a round cut.

On the side, we had kept a large hydrangea and four roses, so we laid out plants around those mature plants. We continued the boxwoods down the border but on this side we let it grow a little more wild, filled with ground cover and succulents that grow naturally there and then toward the back, large bushels of lavender and a newly planted Columnar Apple Tree slowly merge the “New England” front to the more “Provencal” backyard.

From the side yard, you can enter our backyard through a gate and as you enter, I wanted it to feel like a little French Oasis. It’s not a huge backyard space but we wanted to make the most of it. In the entry area from the gate, a raised bed that was already there is now filled with vegetable plants. I added an herb wall in that space as well and an outdoor table and chairs to enjoy the space. In the planting area, we used the long back section behind the house that doesn’t get a lot of sunlight as another patio space that we laid pavers and filled the creases between then with Corsican Mint that has grown in so beautifully over the last year and has the most amazing aroma. Pea Gravel lines the sides of the space creating a very South of France feel and large bushels of Provencal lavender create an intense aroma back there. Terra cotta pots that have been antiqued over time in the outdoors are filled with Hydrangeas, Rosemary and Chocolate Cosmos to add color. Overall, our backyard feels like a little escape in the middle of the city and I absolutely love what we’ve created back there. The only original plant we left in the back was the large mature blueberry bush that was there when we moved in and it’s amazing to have fresh blueberries each Summer.

I also really got into growing food in the backyard and have strawberry, raspberry, tomato and bell pepper plants. As well as growing lettuces and kale, I’ve fallen in love with gardening and growing food that I can actually eat.

Step 4 : Ongoing Maintenance and Future Projects

After doing the majority of our garden renovation project last year, this spring it’s been all about maintenance and small changes. We took a look at what didn’t work so great last year and changed a few things this year to adjust layouts and plantings. We’ve also done some plant maintenance this Spring like pruning and clipping back bushes that got a little big last year. We also laid mulch down to help with weed control and help retain moisture, as well as just general yard cleanup this Spring. We also realized that we prefer the perennial plants over annuals and haven’t bought any annuals this year as it’s so much easier to just keep plants that will keep coming back year after year instead of spending the time and money replacing them each Spring.

While I feel like we’re about 90% of the way there in our yard for what I envisioned originally, we definitely still have a few future projects we’re looking at doing. First, the wood retaining wall isn’t in great shape and while I painted it last Summer and it looks decent, I think we eventually might need to replace it. I would love to redo it ourselves and do a white brick wall, but we will see on that project as it will be a big one! I also would like to add more gravel and refinish the table in the backyard, as well as replacing all the exterior light fixtures to match each other.

Overall, our garden renovation has been a labor of love. On one hand, I’ve never worked so hard physically and hurt so bad after weeks of work in the garden but on the other, I’ve fallen in love with it too. It’s so nice, specifically right now during the pandemic, to have an exterior space, one that I’ve created in the image that I wanted when we moved in. I’m sure there will be many garden projects down the line still but for now, I’m super happy with what we’ve designed and brought to life.

The Final Result

Before and Afters

Tips for Renovating a Garden

Don’t try to rush it. Plants need time to grow and it won’t look how you envision right away. It took a solid year for my garden to start to look like I had envisioned it.

Expect to get physical. My body felt like it was falling apart for months last year as we spent weekends working in the yard doing really physical labor. Just expect that and take lots of baths to rest your muscles!

Have a plan but don’t let that hinder you. I had a plan for the yard going in and it evolved as we went and as we saw how stuff was coming together. It’s ok to let the plan guide you but be alright with changes as you go.

Yards are expensive! Our yard isn’t very big and we still spent thousands of dollars renovating it on our own. Renovating a yard is going to be expensive however you do it so just be prepared for that.

Tools You Probably Will Need to do a Similar Project

These are the tools that we purchased before this renovation project and the items that I still use the most:

Overall, I’m so incredibly happy with how our garden turned out and it feels authentic to our house as well as to the style I really love in a landscape. We’ve done everything ourselves for this whole renovation except for the initial demo of the existing plants. While it was a ton of work and we spent tons of weekends feeling like our bodies were literally falling apart, I’m so glad for the experience of renovating the garden ourselves. We learned so much and got to create a space that we love, all on our own.